Brain Bugs

Written: 2002-04-27
Last Revised: 2002-05-27

"Brain bugs" is my personal term for ideas which are
implanted in the collective consciousness of sci-fi fans. They enter
through the ears ... and warp themselves around the cerebral cortex.
This has the effect of making the victim extremely susceptible to ...
suggestion. As they grow ... follows madness. And- oh, I'm sorry, am
I quoting Khan again? Anyway, these ideas start as an insignificant
microbe and then grow of their own accord, gradually infecting the
mind like a malignant tumour.

This is generally not a problem with a sci-fi series that is
authored (or at least closely directed) by one man. However, Star
Trek is a collaborative effort spanning several decades and dozens
(perhaps hundreds) of different writers, not to mention different
producers. In many cases, the writers grew up as fans of earlier
series, which meant that throw-away items from those earlier series
became brain bugs in their minds. They infected the minds of the
viewing public (including these writers), where they grew and
festered for years into bloated, monstrous masses of diseased tissue.
The result was that with each spin-off, minor elements of earlier
series were blown completely out of proportion and became
self-sustaining mythologies in their own right. In this document, I
will discuss some of these brain bugs.

Jeffries Tubes

In the original show, we discovered that some of
the ship's systems could only be accessed through a cumbersome
"Jeffries tube". The transporters appeared to be chief
among these systems, and there were several episodes in which Scotty
or Spock laboured feverishly in the tube in order to beat a deadline.
This in itself was not too objectionable, and could perhaps be
chalked up to a design oversight. After all, we saw numerous systems
which were not located in tubes, particularly in Main
Engineering, the phaser control room, etc.

However,
unimaginative fans saw this one damned tube and leapt to the
ridiculous conclusion that all important systems in a Star
Trek ship were accessed through such tubes. Some of those fans were
writers, and 20 years later when TNG hit the airwaves, the little
brain bug had grown ... and grown ... and grown. Throughout TNG, DS9,
and Voyager, we were continually treated to the sight of high-ranking
officers (where the hell are all the technicians?) crawling through
24th century ductwork, looking for "access panels" through
which virtually the entirety of the ship's systems were routed. By
the time we were done, any truly important maintenance could only
be done in those damned tubes.

Think about it; why would you
put access panels to most of the ship's systems in these ridiculous
tubes? Why not have them in large rooms where they could be easily
accessed, easily guarded, and maintenance activities could be easily
overseen by on-duty personnel and/or security cameras? How much
harder would be to sabotage a Federation ship if important "access
panels" were invariably in guarded and fully manned rooms rather
than unguarded, narrow crawlspaces snaking all throughout the ship?
How much would this "shapeshifter threat" in DS9 have been
worth if not for these idiotic tubes?

Is there a logical
reason to envision Star Trek ships this way? Of course not; it's a
gigantic brain bug, grown from the insignificant tick of the lone
access tube seen in the original show.

Exploding Bridge Consoles

In the beginning of Star Trek 2, we see the Kobayashi
Maru training simulation in the pre-holodeck era. In the simulation,
battle damage was simulated by having bridge consoles explode in a
spectacular but harmless shower of sparks. Bridge officers would
recoil from the flash and pretend to die. Of course, we all knew that
this was not a very realistic simulation. After all, numerous battles
in the original series caused casualties throughout the rest of the
ship, but the consoles never exploded! Electric shock was about the
most somebody might have possibly expected. Surely no one would be
stupid enough to watch the Kobayashi Maru combat simulation in ST2
and conclude that exploding consoles are the principal cause of death
for bridge personnel, would they?

Unfortunately, nobody
thought to explain this to the writers. Fast forward to TNG. The
seemingly harmless brain bug has grown into the bizarre design
concept that every bridge console appears to be lined with C-4. In
combat, bridge consoles routinely explode and spray their users with
lethal shrapnel. Does this make sense? Of course not. It's such an
obviously silly idea that lethal exploding bridge consoles have
become a running joke among Trekkies. But it's also become Trek
tradition, so in the Berman era, the most dangerous explosive in the
galaxy seems to be a bridge console. Chalk up another victory for the
brain bugs!

Starfleet Academy

In the original series, we hear numerous references to
Kirk's days at Starfleet Academy. He's the captain of the ship, so he
obviously went through officer training, and that means he must have
gone to the Academy, right? Of course. The writers never explicitly
mentioned anyone going through basic training, but surely no one
would be stupid enough to assume that there's no such thing as basic
training just because no one mentioned it, right?

No such
luck. In TNG and beyond, every single member of the crew went to the
Academy! No more basic training in the 24th century. Chief petty
officer Miles O'Brien, for example, went through Starfleet Academy,
but chief petty officer is an enlisted rating, not a commissioned
officer's rank. Nobody thought to mention basic training in the
original series, and the brain bug that resulted from that omission
led to a ridiculous state of affairs in TNG and beyond, where the
entire crew of the ship apparently had to go through the
Academy.

Klingon Vikings

In the original series, the Klingons were an aggressive
military superpower with expansionist ambitions. In the Cold War
politics of the time, they obviously represented the USSR, while the
Romulans just as obviously represented Red China. They appeared
little different from us; they could be violent, aggressive, sly,
cloying, or deceptive, just like us. But at the end of "Errand
of Mercy", Kor reflected wistfully upon the grand battle that
never was: "it would have been glorious!" Oh, from such
humble beginnings did such a vast mythology grow ...

For some
20 years, it was widely understood that the Klingons were
symbolically Russian communists, and throughout even the TOS movies,
this theme remained clear. Kor's single line of dialogue did not
figure too prominently in the fans' assessment of Klingon culture.
But the TNG writers got it in their heads that Cold War politics were
no longer appropriate in the politically correct 1990s, so they
decided to rewrite the Klingons. What did they base the rewrite on?
Kor's single line of dialogue. Kor mentioned his wistful desire for a
"glorious" battle royale, and the ancient Vikings believed
that death in battle was "glorious". That's enough of a
connection for a brain bug; the writers decided that the Klingons had
a similar history to our own, and that there were ancient Vikings in
their past too. Naturally, the fans went along for the ride.

Time
for this brain bug to start growing. In "Heart of Glory",
Worf ran into Korris, a Klingon social reactionary who wanted to
return to the bygone era of ancient warrior values. No big deal,
right? This brain bug has grown as far as it's going to grow,
right?

Wrong. Nobody seemed to notice that Korris was a
dinosaur even among his own people. They noticed only that this was a
cool new aspect of Klingon culture, so the writers grabbed this
assumption and ran with it. They proceeded to construct an entire
society around the notion that the Klingons were futuristic Vikings.
The Viking contempt for a "straw death" became the Klingon
contempt for a straw death (peaceful death away from battle). The
Viking glorification of death in battle became the Klingon
glorification of death in battle. The Viking raider ships became the
Klingon Birds of Prey (which rapidly became the Klingons' principal
combat vessel). Valhalla, the great hall of Viking warriors in the
afterlife, became Stovokor, the great hall of Klingon warriors in the
afterlife. The great feasts in Valhalla became the great feasts of
Stovokor. They somewhat liberalized Klingon government (in which the
Chancellor's daughter took control of the Empire in ST6) reverted to
the Vikings' strict patriarchal society in which women were treated
as chattel and not permitted to hold rank or power (the only two that
tried were the Duras sisters, who were naturally portrayed as evil).
The Vikings' patriarchal religion, with its patriarchal pantheon,
became the Klingons' patriarchal religion (albeit mutated to conform
to Judeo-Christian values, so it centred on a lone male prophet). The
militarization of their society became so exaggerated that their
battle armour became everyday clothes; while Klingon dignitaries wore
leather in ST6, Klingon politicians wear full military body armour
even in the highest offices of their own government in TNG.

The
writers even resurrected the Vikings' primitive melee weapons, arming
Klingons with large, gleaming bladed weapons that became more and
more prominent in their fighting style until they seemed to
constitute the Klingons' primary combat weapon by the time of DS9.
Even the animism associated with some of the ancient Nordic pagan
rituals returned. The Klingons were transformed from civilized people
into animalistic predators who ate raw meat, growled ferally during
lovemaking or when threatened, and treated the act of hunting not as
a method of gathering food or as a sport, but as an eroticized
ritual. Their appearance, altered for the TOS movies in order to make
them look more alien, was altered again, in order to further
this sub-human characterization. Look carefully at the teeth
of Klingons in the TOS movies ST3 and ST6; they look just like human
teeth, don't they? But in TNG, they began to look more and more like
the teeth of wolves: sharp, jagged, and pointed every which way. From
one scene in ST6 where a Klingon eats something with his hands
(something which is entirely appropriate today with certain types of
foods, and which can be easily chalked up to cultural awkwardness),
the writers decided that Klingons are feral eaters too, and TNG-era
Klingons eat the way my dog would, if only he had opposable
thumbs.

What started as an enemy superpower with a mysterious
but familiar alien culture became a farcical one-note alien society
concocted around comic-book interpretations of ancient Norsemen and a
not-so-subtle, rather disturbing white supremacist theme of subhuman,
dark-skinned uncivilized savages. Before too long, it became a
caricature of itself: Worf's pathetic obsession with the most garish
aspects of Klingon history became the entirety of Klingon culture. It
got so bad that we eventually saw the leadership of the entire
Klingon Empire decided by a knife fight! I personally nominate this
particular brain bug as a strong competitor for the Jeffries tubes'
position as the most powerful brain bug in Star Trek.

Greedy, Cowardly Ferengi

In "The Last Outpost", we were introduced to
the Ferengi. Gene Roddenberry originally envisioned the Ferengi as
the Federation's primary foe, to take the place of the Klingons and
Romulans. This was part of the sea change in Star Trek's underlying
theme, which was being revised from the 1960's Cold War to a
left-wing liberal tirade against consumerism and capitalism. But the
Ferengi were not simply greedy; they were powerful, mysterious, and
dangerous. The very first Ferengi warship we ever saw was powerful
enough to dice with the Federation's biggest, most powerful
battleship, and its crew was highly aggressive. Despite their small
stature, they were able to surprise and defeat a Federation landing
party on the ground. Their appearance may have been odd, but these
were clearly not people to be trifled with.

When they
reappeared in "Peak Performance", they were similarly
threatening. They dropped out of warp at point blank range, opened
fire on the USS Enterprise, and promptly disabled most of its combat
systems. They demanded the surrender of the derelict USS Hathaway,
and when Picard (seemingly) destroyed it rather than surrender it,
the Ferengi captain grudgingly complimented him by saying that "I
did not think the Federation had such iron!" A rather
warrior-like sentiment, is it not? Similarly, Picard once recounted
the story of how he lost his previous command, after his ship was
reduced to a flaming wreck by a Ferengi warship. This is a far cry
from the cowardly Ferengi of DS9, isn't it? But in every appearance,
the Ferengi made reference to a profit motive, and that was more than
enough to plant the brain bug.

By the time the Ferengi showed
up on DS9, their interest in profit had grown to encompass their
entire culture. They were suddenly interested in nothing but
the accumulation of wealth, and the writers' desire to simplify every
alien society into a one-note joke meant that any non-financial
elements of their society (including the strong martial tradition
that was obvious from their initial appearance in TNG) vanished
without a trace. Now, they were a laughingstock in combat, and they
made frequent disparaging references to their own combat ineptitude.
When Nog elected to join the Federation military, the decision was
treated with shock, contempt, and derision by his relatives because
Ferengi are businessmen, not soldiers. When Quark went on a mission
to rescue his mother, they found a single Ferengi mercenary who was
good with weapons, and the others acted as if he was some kind of
freakish anomaly. What happened to the heavily armed Ferengi warships
we saw in TNG? Did the writers suffer a massive collective amnesia
attack?

As time went by, this brain bug continued to grow. Not
only was greed now the only defining characteristic of Ferengi
society, but the writers figured they were on a roll, so they even
made it the Ferengi religion! Instead of the Ten Commandments,
the Ferengi had the "Rules of Acquisition", with which the
viewers were bludgeoned with constant reminders of Ferengi greed.
Instead of "astral plane" or "holy ghost", they
had the "Great Material Continuum". We were told that the
Ferengi had no loyalty to anything but money; not to friends,
not to family, not to king and country. No one ever managed to
explain how a society could possibly function along these lines, but
no matter; the writers obviously had no interest in constructing an
interesting or multi-faceted alien society for the Ferengi. Far from
it; instead, they seemed to be interested in reducing it to a single
element, just as they had done for the Klingons. By the time they
were done, another society had been transformed into a farcical
one-note caricature by the unfettered growth of a brain bug. Planted
in TNG, and grown to the proportions of Jack's famous beanstalk in
DS9.

Borg Assimilation

When we were first introduced to the Borg in "Q
Who", they appeared to be a race of cyborg techno-scavengers.
There was no hint of assimilation; we saw birthing rooms where baby
drones were being grown in incubators, and Q explained that they were
not interested in humans, or the Federation. They wanted only
the Enterprise. They were technological "users", who
apparently wandered space in search of useful technology to take from
its owners by force. They validated Q's claims in that episode by
demonstrating their interest in technology over organic life,
when their only reaction to the death of a comrade was to take some
important bits of his technology back with them.

But in "Best
of Both Worlds", one of the writers had the bright idea of
making the Borg kidnap Picard and then assimilate him while aboard
their ship, thus setting up one of the best best cliff-hangers in
Star Trek history. The situation was resolved (although Star Trek:
Insurrection suggests that there may have been lasting brain damage
from the incident), but the brain bug was planted. The Borg
assimilate people! Of course, they only did it to one person,
and they had to beam onto the Enterprise, knock him out, beam him
back to their ship, and then surgically alter him in order to make it
happen, but they did it nonetheless, and that was more than enough
for the brain bug.

Fast forward to STFC: the writers get the
bright idea that if a little bit of assimilation is good, then a lot
of assimilation will be better. Where once they were interested in
assimilating Federation technology, they were now interested only in
assimilating people. Consider the plot of the film; when their attack
failed and they were forced to go to plan B, they tried to prevent
the technological development of the human race in order to
assimilate it! They would have erased the very technology that they
were supposedly interested in! But of course, their interest in
technology was just part of their original concept, and all of that
was washed away by the big brain bug.

Now, instead of
assimilating key personnel in order to facilitate their goal of
turning humans into a slave race ("to service us") and
stealing all of the Federation's technology, assimilation is the
entire raison d'etre of their society! All of a sudden, they're
friggin' vampires! They lurch through the corridors of the
Enterprise-E like extras from Night of the Living Dead, and when they
seize their prey, they sink their fangs, er- "assimilation
tubules" into their necks, leaving two nice little fang-marks,
er- "assimilation tubule punctures". Instead of
assimilating their victims through surgical procedures (as in "Best
of Both Worlds"), they pollute your blood with nanoprobes (more
parallels with vampires, who drink some of your blood and leave the
rest in an undead state). Best of all, when you kill the head
vampire, er- "Borg Queen", all of the other vampires, er-
"drones" die too.

By the time the Voyager writers
were done, the Borg were utterly useless, unable to learn or analyze
or think for themselves. Their only means of technological
advancement was to assimilate technology that they did not already
have, and if they could not assimilate (eg- Species 8472), they were
totally helpless. They actually needed Voyager to defeat Species 8472
for them! Yet another case of a brain bug turning an alien society
into a farcical one-note joke.

Whither Trek Brain Bugs?

So why does this happen? Why do brain bugs grow like that? What
makes them move in the directions that they do? My personal suspicion
is that it's an inevitable side-effect of having so many writers.
When one man creates a fictional universe himself, as is the case
with authors such as Heinlein, Tolkien, or Herbert and
writer-filmmakers such as George Lucas, this doesn't tend to happen.
The universe doesn't start to model itself after the lowest common
fan denominator.

But when you have armies of writers and successive groups of
producers, you get a writers' version of the old "telephone
game". Do you remember the telephone game from grade-school? All
of the kids would sit in a circle. The first kid would whisper
something in the second kid's ear, who would turn around and whisper
it to the third kid, and so on. By the time it came back to the first
kid, the message had completely changed. Similarly, when you
have many writers working on one show, each new writer tries to
interpret the work of the writers that came before, and then
extrapolate from it.

It's easy to see how this works like that old grade-school
telephone game. Writer #1 creates a fictional universe. Writer #2
creates a story set in his interpretation of Writer #1's fictional
universe. Writer #3 creates a story which is set in his
interpretation of Writer #1's fictional universe, and which attempts
to continue his interpretation of the story written by Writer #2.
Writer #4 tries to write a story which is consistent with the story
written by Writer #3, and which is set in his interpretation of
Writer #1's fictional universe, but he's not too familiar with the
story made by Writer #2 because he never saw it. It's pretty obvious
that by the time you get to writer #50, you've got a real mess on
your hands.

But this mess is not entirely random, unlike the telephone game.
People have a tendency to simplify concepts in their minds because,
well, it's easier that way. We see this most prominently in the case
of racial stereotyping, where racists simplify an entire human race
into one or two key characteristics. It seems to be an innate
tendency that can only be solved through education, which may help
explain why racism tends to be inversely correlated to education
level. The same mentality which drives racism seems to drive many of
these brain bugs. Rather than think critically or thoroughly, it's
easier to seize upon the most visible or interesting characteristic
and then simplify the situation so that nothing remains but that lone
characteristic. And in the Berman-Braga age, simple-minded thinking
is the order of the day.

General Sci-fi Brain Bugs

Of course, brain bugs aren't unique to Star Trek. Sci-fi writers
from various genres and franchises tend to notice each others' work
and emulate certain themes, and the result is very similar: an idea
sprouts, gets simplified into a parody of itself, grows out of
control, and then becomes universally accepted even though it's
stupid.

Organic technology

In sci-fi nowadays, virtually all truly advanced
technology seems to be "organic". From Tin Man in Star Trek
to the Vorlons and Shadows in B5 and now, the latest additions to the
Star Wars "extended universe" (which has obviously been
polluted by sci-fi chic), the theme is omnipresent and inescapable:
bio-technology is vastly superior to primitive heavy metal
technologies. The motivation for this theme is tinged with human
conceit; could it be that we simply want to believe that
organic life is vastly superior to any piece of technology, because
we refuse to accept that we are an insignificant organic speck in the
history of the universe? Because like it or not, we are an
insignificant speck in the history of the universe. If the time
between the Big Bang and the formation of our solar system were one
day, the entirety of human history would take place in less than one
second, before lunch on the second day.

Either way, the
popularity of the organic technology myth is somewhat baffling. One
of the most baffling parts is the fact that it is assumed to be more
"advanced". Here's a question for you: when did we produce
the first armoured vehicle? Was it in World War 1, with the tank? Or
was it centuries earlier, with the mounted knight? Did you know that
the mounted knight was made possible through selective horse breeding
(ie- organic technology), which produced horses big and strong enough
to carry the heavy armoured riders into battle? Do you believe that
sheepdogs were always like that? Dogs and horses could both be
described as examples of bio-technological tools, engineered by
humans for specific tasks through the use of applied evolutionary
scientific principles (even if they didn't have a name for them at
the time). Bio-weapons are nothing new either, having been used since
at least medieval times (besieging armies would catapult diseased
carcasses into a fortress). And what about bio-armour? Sorry, but all
I can say is "been there, done that". Wooden ships had
bio-armour, remember? Would you seriously want to pit bio-armour
against the 120mm smoothbore gun of an M-1 Abrams? There is a
reason we switched to steel, people! Think about it.

At no
time have we ever seen a shred of evidence that biological systems
can realistically supplant wholly artificial technologies in
applications such as large-scale power generation, armour, naval or
aircraft propulsion, military weaponry, bridges and buildings, etc.
In fact, all of those technologies were developed to replace
biological systems! Biological systems are chemically reactive and
structurally feeble in comparison to metals and ceramics, and both of
these characteristics can spell doom for a starship. Furthermore,
there are strict limits to how much this will ever change, because
chemical reactivity is a prerequisite for life! Moreover, living
cells requires a constant supply of nutrients, which means that all
living cells must always be semi-permeable. Compare this to a
massive, inert piece of metallic or ceramic/metal composite armour,
and you can quickly see the problem for organics.

"But
biological organisms can self-repair!" some might say. However,
they are far more easily injured in the first place, and the kind of
attack that a biological organism can repair won't even scratch the
surface of a metallic armoured vehicle. "But biology is the most
powerful force this planet has ever known!" some might say.
Sorry, but that's one of those non-literal figures of speech, like
"the pen is mightier than the sword" or "faith can
move mountains". Nuclear fusion (particularly from the Sun) is
far more powerful. "But the roots of a tree can push up
sidewalks!" some might say. Sorry, but it's no big deal to push
up a sidewalk. A sidewalk is just stones laying on gravel and dirt,
and the routine thermal contraction and expansion of the ground every
winter destroys more sidewalk slabs and miles of pavement than tree
roots ever could.

Organic technology is good for medical
applications (obviously, since we are organic) and bioweapons are
certainly dangerous (although they're also fraught with
difficulties). However, the idea of organic space combat vehicles and
high-powered propulsion and/or weapons systems is just silly. Even
organic computers are a highly questionable idea in sci-fi,
since we are already researching quantum computing today, and quantum
computing operates on a smaller scale than organics can. Sci-fi
writers and fans who tout the omnipotence of organic technology tend
to identify areas in which it is superior, while ignoring all of the
areas in which it is vastly inferior. As usual, they simplify
variables out of the equation, and the remaining oversimplified idea
becomes a brain bug.

"Captain, I'm picking up an
approaching ship."

"What can you tell me about
it?"

"Oh my God, it's organic! What are we going to
do, Captain?"

"There's not much we can do,
Ensign. Organic technology is so far beyond our grasp that we can't
even imagine the power they must have. All we have is high-powered
guns, nuclear missiles, and our primitive metallic armour. What are
you reading from their incredibly advanced bio-ship?"

"Their
ship is soft and flexible. Its construction materials are
semi-permeable and laced with a network of delicate circulation
passages. Instead of using impermeable high-density materials, it's
made from countless tiny thin-walled cells which tend to rapidly
break down in the presence of corrosive chemicals or
radiation."

"What? And we were supposed to be afraid
of this? Open fire!"

SQUISH ...

Evolutionary Transfigurations

Evolution is a slow process: one which is poorly
understood by the general population, particularly in America, where
more than half of the population expressed support for "creation
theory" (a deceptive term which implies that creationism is a
scientific theory) in CNN and Time polls. If you're an American and
you're offended by that, I don't mean it as a national insult; more
of a commiseration. There are a lot of creationists up here in Canada
too; in fact, there's one or two in my office (although I can debate
them into the ground, so they don't bother trying to convince
me).

In any case, any animal population contains significant
built-in variation. Over many generations, certain variations will be
favoured by natural, artificial, or sexual selection. Those
variations will become dominant, thus changing the makeup of the
population and also the range of variation. Over a large number of
generations and successive changes, major structural change can
occur. Sufficiently large changes can make the population
intersterile (ie- incapable of breeding) with other populations with
which it was once compatible, thus causing evolutionary
speciation.

Unfortunately, many science fiction writers seem
to have no idea how evolution works, to say nothing of speciation. In
their minds, structural change takes place through a miraculous
transformation (bathed in white light, of course) rather than a
gradual selection of preferred (and pre-existing) variants. In Star
Trek, a species "evolves" to the next step in its
evolutionary development by undergoing a dramatic transfiguration; in
fact, there was a TNG episode called "transfigurations" in
which we saw precisely that: a humanoid male who miraculously
transformed into a being of white light and then floated away.

Star
Trek is not the only offender. Babylon5 had an entire planetary
civilization which was about to undergo such a transfiguration, but
they were trapped on the cusp of their change by a soul hunter (don't
ask). In these cases, we have individuals or whole populations which
undergo an abrupt, dramatic change from their forebears, often in the
midst of their lives (rather than simply being part of a genetic sub-group
which differs from the median). This is not evolution, ladies and
gentlemen! In fact, it is the opposite of evolution.

So
where does this brain bug come from? Well, to put it bluntly, it comes
from creationism. The creationist mentality of scientific ignorance and
miracles finds itself a new mouthpiece in sci-fi, where biological
change occurs in dramatic, abrupt metamorphoses before your very eyes
(and always bathed in white light). It doesn't take a genius to see
where this theme comes from. Worse yet, Babylon5 showed us humanity 1
million years in the future, and (surprise, surprise), we have become
"energy beings", floating ethereally through space in our
transcendent glory. The only thing missing was the harp.

Gravitics

Gravity is an extremely weak force, but you
wouldn't know that if you read a lot of sci-fi, where "gravitic
technology" typically rules the day. Electromagnetics are
"primitive", or so the sci-fi writers would have us
believe. If you want to show how powerful your sci-fi civilization
really is, then make them use "gravitics" everywhere.
Gravitic propulsion, gravitic weapons, gravitics defenses, etc. But
does this make sense? Let us compare gravitics with electromagnetism:

Electromagnetics

Gravitics

Affects particles with charge, irrespective of mass

Affects particles with mass, irrespective of charge

From Coulomb's Law, resultant force Is proportional to the
product of charges divided by r² and then multiplied by the
constant value of 8.99E9 N·m²/C². Two charges
of 1 C, separated by 1 m, will produce 9E9 N of force.

From Newton's Law of Gravitation, resultant force is
proportional to the product of masses divided by r² and
then multiplied by the constant value of 6.67E-11 m³/(s²·kg).
Two masses of 5.68E-12 kg (1 coulomb worth of electrons),
separated by 1 m, will produce 2.15E-33 N of force.

No, that second row is not a misprint. One
coulomb worth of electrons will generate an astounding 4.2E42 times
more force through electromagnetism than gravity! Of course,
electrons have a very high ratio of charge to mass so you might be
tempted to call that an anomaly, but the ratio is huge for protons
too: 1.2E36.

You need not crunch numbers like this in order to
appreciate the power of electromagnetics. Simply look at the world
around you; why do solid objects exist? Why do we have enormous rocky
structures such as Mount Everest, that tower five miles above sea
level despite the pull of gravity? Simply by existing, Mount
Everest is defying gravity, to the tune of suspending billions of
tons of rock miles above sea level. And what allows it to do this?
Why, its solidity, of course. And what gives it solidity?
Electromagnetics.

Think about it: the only reason your
body holds together instead of dispersing into a cloud of gas is
electromagnetism. Solid matter is characterized by particular kinds
of chemical bonds (ionic, covalent, metallic), and these bonds are
electromagnetic phenomena, based on the attraction of protons to
electrons. In fact, the only reason solid objects can't pass through
one another is the mutual electrostatic repulsion between their
electrons at close range! As Feynman pointed out, when you throw
yourself off a tall building, gravity accelerates you downwards at 1
G, but when you hit the ground, electromagnetism will abruptly
decelerate you at many thousands of G (a rate which would be
even higher if not for the flexibility of your body and the ground).
As the old saying goes, the fall doesn't kill you, but the landing
will.

So where does this brain bug come from? Paradoxically,
the only reason people think gravity is stronger than
electromagnetism is that gravity is so weak. It is so weak
that a human being can easily overcome the gravitational attraction
of an entire planet, eg- by throwing a ball up in the air and
watching gravity pull it back down, so we intuitively perceive its
action. We do not intuitively perceive the action of
electromagnetism in the natural world because of its sheer
pervasiveness and strength: its manifestations (eg- solidity,
chemical reactions) seem immutable to us, so we assume that they are
not the result of invisible forces.

In fact, much of
the scientifically ignorant lay population is incapable of
intellectually grasping the concept of constant applied force without
work (they insist on anthropomorphisizing physics, by assuming that
if it takes effort for a human to exert force, it must take effort
for atoms to do it too). This throws up yet another burdle to public
understanding of the power of electromagnetism. The average person is
either unwilling or unable to recognize that he owes his solidity to
invisible forces constantly pushing and pulling against all of the
tiny particles in his body. But make no mistake: electromagnetism is
what gives us substance. Every time we build a skyscraper, we are
using electromagnetism to defeat gravity, even if we don't realize
it.

So if electromagnetism is so great, why can't we
electromagnetically generate artificial gravity? The answer is that
electric charge can be either positive or negative, so the protons
and electrons in a typical object cancel out at long distances. At
microscopic ranges they are imbalanced because the electrons of
adjacent atoms are closer together than the protons, hence solidity
and all other chemical interactions. Gravity, on the other hand, acts
on mass regardless of charge (and we have never observed negative
mass), so if you have billions upon billions of tons of matter, you
will exert significant force. But there's the rub: you need
billions upon billions of tons of matter. The relationship between
mass and gravitational attraction is fundamental; there is no
evidence whatsoever that it can be arbitrarily altered, any more than
we can arbitrarily change the strength of electromagnetic force to
effortlessly convert solid objects into plasma.

In sci-fi, it
is presumed that if you could focus and reshape gravitational fields,
you would be nigh-omnipotent. One person wrote to me once to mention
something called a "gravitic wedge" (I'm guessing it was
portrayed as some kind of "ultimate weapon" in some cheesy
techno-masturbatory sci-fi novel or fanfic). But even if you could
arbitrarily focus and reshape gravitational fields, a starship simply
doesn't have enough mass to generate gravitational fields of
sufficient strength to be noticeable.

If we're going to grant ourselves the ability to focus
and manipulate forcefields to such a fine degree, why not use
electromagnetism instead? If you could generate a negatively charged
plane wall, even with a tiny fraction of the total charge bound up in
a typical starship's mass, it would cleanly slice any solid object in
half. Similarly, gravitic "shields" are a silly idea; even
the gravity field of an entire planet or star will only decelerate
incoming objects at a few G, but if we could make a negatively
charged "bubble" around a starship, incoming missiles would
crash into it just as if it were a solid object. And even artificial
gravity need not be based on actual gravity; the rotating-ship
concept uses simple kinematics, and our imaginary sci-fi race with
fine control over electromagnetism could slightly polarize objects in
order to make them respond more strongly to magnetic fields (believe
it or not, electrically neutral atoms or even neutrons have
tiny magnetic moments which can be used in order to confine them
electromagnetically; see Wolfgang Paul's Nobel Lecture of December 8,
1989).

In short, if we had the power to arbitrarily manipulate
gravitational or electromagnetic fields with the precision and
flexibility typically described in sci-fi, I'd rather have the
electromagnetic fields. As a weapon, it would be absolutely
devastating, and it wouldn't require billions upon billions of tons
of mass. Unfortunately, it's not exotic enough. Familiarity breeds
contempt, and the existence of real electromagnetic technology seems
to disqualify it for sci-fi. This was not always the case; in fact,
the 1950s classic "War of the Worlds" portrayed Martians
who made use of an "electromagnetic blister" shield system.
But modern sci-fi chic has latched onto "gravitic"
technology for precisely the same reasons that it shouldn't be taken
seriously: it doesn't make sense. And since it doesn't make sense,
sci-fi fans seem to believe that it must be better (think of it as
Arthur C. Clarke's law in reverse).

Star Wars has historically
avoided these kinds of pitfalls for the simple reason that no one in
the canon movies ever talks about how the technology works. Say what
you will about Star Wars dialogue, but no Star Wars character will
ever force the audience to endure one of Lt. Cmdr. Data's long-winded
explanations of how to use a meaningless technobabble solution to
solve a meaningless technobabble problem. There was also a time that
Babylon 5 seemed to be ahead of the pack in terms of realism, but
somewhere between its beginning and end, it adopted the same "organic
ships" and "gravitic propulsion" nonsense that you'll
find everywhere else.

Exploding Fusion Reactors

Why do fusion reactors explode? This brain bug is
virtually universal to all science fiction. Whether it's Star Wars,
Star Trek, Babylon 5, or Aliens, the consistent message is that
reactors are bombs in disguise. Damage them, and you'll get an
enormous multi-megaton explosion. You might even get many hours of
warning (thanks to the Ticking Time Bomb™ cliché).

But
why would this happen? Does anyone stop to ask why fusion reactors
should be so volatile? It is extremely difficult to maintain a fusion
reaction, and it requires an enormous input of energy to do so. In
fact, thermonuclear weapons must use a nuclear fission bomb in order
to cause the fusion reaction! The Sun must use enormous pressure
(from gravity) to compress plasma to many times the density of lead!
Why would these conditions intensify on their own if the
reactor is damaged, when the biggest engineering hurdle to nuclear
fusion is achieving them in the first place?

This brain bug
is incredibly pervasive; ships in sci-fi always explode when severely
damaged. To be honest, I'm at something of a loss to know why. There
is certainly no parallel in real life; naval vessels very
rarely explode. The infamous HMS Hood is the only example that
springs to mind; most warships sink from taking in water, but they
don't explode. The same is true for nuclear vessels; even a nuclear
submarine which suffers an absolutely devastating catastrophe (such
as a torpedo going off inside the tube) doesn't explode like a
nuclear bomb; it just sinks.

So where does this brain bug come from? I don't think
it's from real life, and I see no techno-masturbatory or religious
angle. Therefore, I can only imagine that its roots lie in fiction
clichés. But if you look back through the history of action
and sci-fi movies, this isn't a constant by any means. The cheesiest
Flash Gordon movies had ships exploding like firecrackers of course,
but if you look at big-budget movies such as War of the Worlds,
crippled ships simply stop working. Perhaps it started with James
Bond, in which the Exploding Supervillain Lair™ has become a
standard. In any case, it's become a rather tiresome cliché,
and it would be nice to see some variation from this theme.